-{ To CARIBOO AND BACK Ke

which Mary Mulligan and Betty embarked,
with two or three others besides the four
canoeists, he chose a French Canadian named
Jacques, who had joined the party at Fort Pitt,
to be the captain. He was a man of skill and
foresight and of a hard cast of countenance.

“We mos’ better go las’,” he said to the pro-
fessor privately. “That way we see what the
other men do.”

So it was settled, and Jacques’ raft was at
the end of the procession of four to be loosed
from their moorings.

They were all built on the same lines. They
were forty feet long and eighteen feet wide and
were fitted with rowlocks and long sweeps in-
tended to be used not so much to propel the
craft as to direct their course through the cur-
rents and backwaters of the river. And, as the
tailor had described it, each one carried a bushy
tail in the shape of an untrimmed tree, fir or
hemlock, extending backwards and trailing in
the water.

With much shouting and cheering the un-
wieldy platforms were pushed off, one after the
other, and were swung by the current into mid-

eS Oa a ee rae a

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